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Forrest City, Arkansas
Age 87
"My mother was named Silla Davis. She had four children. Her owners was Jep Devis and Tempy Davis. She died
and he married her niece. Sally Davis. He had fifteen children by his first wife and five more by his second wife.
Wasn't that a plenty children doe? Name was a field hand. She ploughed in slavery right along. My father was
named Bob Lee (Lee?). I never knowed much about him. His folks moved and took him off. Mother was sold but
not on a stand. She belong to Bill Davis. He was Jep's brother. They said Bill Davis drunk up mother and all her
children. He sold Aunt Serina to a man in Elberton, Georgia and all he had left then was grandma, He couldn't sell
her. She was too old and Aunt Kizziah and Aunt Martha lived with her. Mother was born in Georgia. When a child
was sold it nearly grieved the mothers and brothers and sisters to death. It was bad as deaths in the families. Jep
Davis had forty or fifty niggers. He had six boys. They all had to go to war. They was in the Confederate army.
Billy Davis was his daddy's young overseer. He had been raised up with some of the nigger boys then come over
them. They wouldn't mind his orders. He tried to whoop them. They'd fight him back, choke him, throw him on the
ground. Then the old man would whoop them. We all wanted 'em all to come home but Billy. Billy Davis got killed
at war and never come home. His sisters was afraid some of the nigger boys raised up with him on the place would
kill him and wanted Jep to make him stay at the house. Jep Davis was a good master and he was bad enough.
"I seen mama whooped. They tied some of them to trees and some they just whooped across their backs. It was
'cordin' to what they had done. Some of them would run off to the woods and stay a week or a month. The other
niggers would feed them at night to keep than from starving.
"Jep Davis made a will after his first wife died and give out all his young niggers to his first set of children. His
young wife cried till he destroyed it. She said, 'You kept the old ones here and me and my children won't have
nothing.' I was willed to Miss Lizzie. They was fixing the wagon for me to go in. I wanted to go to Jefferson on the
train. I told then so, I wanted to ride on the train. I never did get off. His young wife started crying. Miss Lizzie
lived with her brother. They didn't want this young woman to have their father and he did. They kept a fuss up with
her and all left. Then he divided the land.
"I nursed for his second wife, Miss Sally. I was five years or little older when I started nursing for his first wife. I
nursed for a long time. I don't like children yet on that account. I got so many whoopings on their blame. I'd drap
'em, leave 'em, pinch 'em, quit walking 'em and rocking 'em. I got tired of 'em all the time.
"He and Zack (white) was raised up together. He was one of the old set of children. The baby in that set. I'd set on
the log across a branch and mit till Zack would break open a biscuit and sop it in ham gravy and bring it to me after
he eat his breakfast. One morning the sun was so bright; he run down there crying, said his mama was dead. He
never brought me no biscuit. He had just got up. I was five years old. I said I was glad. Emily was the cook and she
come down there and kicked me off the log and made my nose bleed. I cried and run home. My mother picked me
up in her arms, took me in her lap and asked me about it. I told her I was glad 'cause she kept that little cowhide and
whooped me with it. They took me to the grave. She wanted to be buried in a pretty grave at the side of the house
off a piece. She was buried there first. There was a big crowd. I kept running up towards the grave and they would
pull me back by my dress tail. She was buried in a metal coffin. Susan was the oldest girl. She fainted. They took
her to a carriage standing close. The whole family was buried there. Took back from places they lived to be buried
in that graveyard. That was close to Hune, Georgia.
"When the old man Jep Davis married again. Miss Sally must have me sleep in her room on a pallet so I could tend
to the baby. The older girls would pick me and I would tell them what they talked about after they went to bed.
"When the War come on, the boys and Jep Davis dug a hole in the henhouse, put the guns in a box and buried them.
They was there when the War ended, They had some jewelry. I don't know where they kept it. They sent all of the
niggers fifteen miles on the river away from the Yankees. Not a one of us ever run off. Not a one over went to the
War or the Yankees. Jep Davis had been to get his mail on his horse. A Yankee come up at the gate walking and
took it. He asked for the bridle and saddle but the Yankee laughed in his face. We never seen our horse no more.
'Babe' we called her. She was a pretty horse and so gentle we could ride her bare back.
"Jep Davis was religious. They had preaching at his church, the Baptist church at Nuna, for white folks in the
morning and a white preacher preach for the niggers at the same church in the evening. He'd go to prayer meeting
on Wednesday night and Thursday night he would come to the boys' house and read the Bible to his own niggers.
We would sing and pray. He never cared how much we would sing and pray but he never better ketch 'em dancing.
He'd whoop every one of 'em.
"I learned some of the ABC's in playing ball with the white children. we never had a book. I never want to school in
my life. The boys not married but up grown lived in a house to their own selves. They got cooked for up at Jep
Davises house till they got a house built for them and give then a wife. Maybe they would see a woman on another
plantation and claim her. Then the master had to talk that over.
"Jep Davis had been to town. He got a notice to free his niggers. He hed the farm bell rung. We all went out up to
his house. He said, 'You are free. Go. If you can't get along come back and do like you been.' They left. Want hog
wild. I was the last one to go. He said, 'Mattie, come back if you find you can't make it.' I had a hard time for a fact.
I had a sister married in Atlanta. I went with them in 1866. I married to better my living. We quit. I met a man come
to Arkansas and sant back for me when he got the money. I was in Atlanta thirty years. I was married in Arkansas in
1895. Been here ever since 'ceptin' visits back in Georgia. My husband was a good farmer and a good shoemaker.
He left me six good rant houses and this house here when he died." (She has an income of forty dollars per
month---rant on houses.) "He was a hard worker.
"I'd go to see my white folks after freedom. I loved 'am all.
"Jep Davis died out of the church. Him and Jack (Robertson, Robson, Robinson ?) was deacons together in the
Baptist church and their farms j'ined. Jack had two boys, John and Ed. Ed was killed by Hinton Right over his sister
Mollis. Then she married Hinton Right. The quarrel started at La Grange but they had a duel during preaching on
the church yard at the Baptist church at Nuna, Georgia. Jack was mean. He had a lot of Negroes and a big farm.
He had two boys and four girls. Jennie died. Florence and Lula, old maids; John and Ed and Mollis.
"Jack caused Jep Davis to be put out of the church 'cause he said after freedom he didn't believe in slavery. He
always thought they ought to be free but owned some to be like all the other folks and to have a living easy. He was
afraid to own that, fear somebody kill him before freedom. When Jack was sick, Jep went to see him. He wouldn't
let Jep come in to see him and he died.
"I worked in the field, washed and ironed. I never cooked but a little. In Atlanta when my first baby could stand in a
cracker box I started cooking for a woman. She was upstairs. Had a small baby a few days old. I didn't have time to
do the work and nurse and get my baby to sleep. It cried and fretted till I got dinner done. I took it and got it to
sleep. She sent word for me to leave my baby at home, she wasn't going to have a nigger baby crying in her kitchen
and messing it up. She was a Yankee woman. I left and I never cooked out no more.
"I never had no dealings with the Ku Klux. I was in Atlanta then. I heard my mother say they killed and beat up a
lot of colored people in the country where she was. Seem like they was mad 'cause they was free.
"Times was hard after freedom. Times is hard now for some folks. Times as running away with the white and black
races both. They stop thinking. The thing what they call education done ruined this country. The folks quit work and
living on education. I learned to work. My husband was a good shoemaker. We laid up all we could. I got seven
houses renting around here. I gets about forty or forty-five dollars a month rent. It do very well. I reckon."
Interviewer Samuel S. Taylor"
